You are watching book tv on cspan 2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. [applause] good morning. Im director of the center for learning, literacy and engagement at the library of congress. One of the major programs of this new center at the library is oversight of the National Book festival, whose overall theme this year is change makers. This is why im especially excited to introduce our new panel devoted to change makers. The focus of much of the programming at the library of congress this year. We are currently celebrating change makers at our Thomas Jefferson building, with an exhibition called shall not be denied, women fight for the vote, in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment. And this december, we will mount an exhibit devoted to the life and influence of one of our great civil rights icons, rosa parks. I invite you to visit the library to see these exhibitions. You can also view our exhibitions and examine the rosa parks collection online at loc. Gov, where we offer millions of free educational resources. The subject of the books on this panel may at first glance seem to have little in common. But they have one essential trait that all successful leaders share, they made change, significant changes that are still being felt today. Frederick douglas, Rachel Carson, jane jacobs, jane goodall, alice waters and Winston Churchill changed the world forever, and our lives are enriched by what they did. Im pleased to introduce our change maker panel authors. Andrea bar net is the author of visionary women how Rachel Carson, jane jacobs, jane goodall and alice waters changed our world, a finalist for an award. Also the author of all night party, the women of bohemian Greenwich Village and harlem 1913 to 1930 which was a nonfiction finalist for the 2004 literary awards. Andrea barnett was a regular contributor to the New York Times book review for 25 years and her work has appeared in smithsonian magazine, harpers bazaar, elle, and many other publications. David w. Blight is the class of 1954 professor of American History and director of the Guilder Center for the study of slavery, resistance, and abolition at yale university. He is the author or editor of dozens of books, including american oracle, the civil war, in the Civil Rights Era and race and rewrun i dont know, the civil war in reunion, the civil war in american memory as well as annotated editions of Frederick Douglass first two autobiography. David blight has devoted himself to douglas during much of his professional life and has been awarded the bank croft prize, the Abraham Lincoln prize and the Frederick Douglas prize, among others. His new book is Frederick Douglas, prophet of freedom, winner of this years Pulitzer Prize in history. Andrew roberts thats worth definitely [applause] Andrew Roberts is the bestselling author of the storm of war, a new history of the Second World War, masters and commanders, how four titans won the the war in the west, 1941 to 1945. And napoleon, a life, winner of the l. A. Times book prize for biography. Andrew roberts has won many other honors including the woolson history prize and the British Army Military book award. Andrew roberts frequently writes for the wall street journal and is the roger and martha murts visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at stanford university. His new book is churchill, walking with destiny. Finally, our panel will be moderated by historian kai bird, who cowrote the Pulitzer Prize winning the triumph and tragedy of j. Robert oppenheimer. Since 2017 hes been the executive director and distinguished lecturer of the center for biography at the City University of new york. He is currently working on a biography of jimmy carter, during the white house years. His most recent book was the good spy, the life and death of robert aim. Please welcome andrea barnett, david w. Blight, Andrew Roberts, and kai bird. [applause] good morning. Can everyone hear . Im sufficiently micced up. My name is kai bird. This panel is sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for biography which is a very unusual thing. Our whole thing is to defend and promote the art and craft of biography. Ive spent the last few decades doing only biography. Im obsessed with it. So im glad to see so many fans here of biography. I want to say to those americans who are not here something important, something heart felt, perhaps something a bit provocative. I want to say that if youre not reading biography, youre not trying to understand your world. Now, i know i dont mean to down play the importance of novels or poetry or other nonfiction, but biography is really the foundation for understanding our world. Now im not saying if you do read biography, youre going to understand the world [laughter] you may in fact come away more confused than ever about the complexity of the human being and our history and our world, but it is the effort to read biography is what counts. And if you know any biographers, you know that they are obsessed with another life. You cant write a biography without this obsession. We have with us today three really eminent biographers and their subject spans two centuries. One explains america in the 19th century and our nations original sin. Another life chronicles two world wars in the 20th century. And our third biographer tackles the lives of four women whose lives explain the cultural transformations that took place in the 1960s. I want to remind everyone, near the end of the 75minute session, around noon, well stop and start to take questions from the audience. So please think of your questions. And afterwards, i believe at 1 30, each of the authors will be signing books. Were here to discuss more than one great life. But the word great has been so greatly debased in recent years [applause] im not sure it has any real meaning. So lets just say that were dealing with men and women who led large lives on historys stage. And each in their own way were game changers. So im going to ask each of our authors to begin with five to seven to ten minutes to talk about their subjects, but please begin by explaining why each of you chose your figures. And tell us how long you have been laboring to write these biographies. Andrew, do you want to start . No, youre going to be micced up now. Wheres our mic . He can go to the lecture, oh, okay. [laughter] lay disand gentlemen ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honor to be invited to address you today, and thank you very much indeed kai. Extraordinary to see so many people. I once spoke at the seven oaks Literary Festival in kent, in england, where fewer people turned out than there were oaks. [laughter] and you ask about where the obsession comes from. Of course i dont really think im obsessed, the fact that im english, and the best we get is extreme enthusiasm. [laughter] but when theres a subject like Winston Churchill, i some years ago saw a rather nervewracking survey which said that 20 of british teenagers it was a huge survey, 5,000 teenagers, they asked, and not young teenagers either, quite old ones, 18, 19 said that they thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. Whereas 47 of them thought that Sherlock Holmes was a real person, and 53 thought that Eleanor Rigby was. [laughter] so in a sense attempting to fight against this nervewracking ignorance about the person who i believe to be the greatest englishman who ever lived. I would like to take you back to friday the 10th of may, 1940, the day on which churchill became Prime Minister and on that morning, on dawn that day, adolf hitler invaded luxembourg and belgium and holland shortly afterwards was set to invade france. Churchill said of that day in his war memoirs, i felt as if i were walking with destiny and all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. What i have tried to do in my book is to investigate the extent to which the jobs that churchill had, first lord of the admiralty and chancellor, home secretary and so on, had prepared him for this great hour in trial of 1914. What i also try to do is look at the beginning part of that sentence. The bit about walking with destiny because i think its absolutely key to understanding Winston Churchill that one appreciates that he had a driving sense of personal destiny, one that at the age of 16, he to his best friend at school, where he said Winston Churchill by the way was almost completely selfeducated because he had to be because he went to harrow [laughter] he said to his best friend there will be great upheavals and terrible struggles in our lives and i shall be called upon to save london and save england. He believed this when he was 16 and all the way through his life, especially through his close brushes with death, this was underlined for him. You have this sense of destiny. I subtitled my book walking with destiny not as a friend told me because all americans are interested in destiny [laughter] but because i believe it was central to his life. When people see the things he did and extraordinary attributes he had, including many blunders and failures, he made mistake after mistake in his life but unlike many politicians he learned from every one of them. And as a result, he was able to ultimately not only as he predicted for himself as a 16yearold school boy, not only save london and england, but also civilization itself. Thank you very much. [applause] instead of having you go to the podium, ive been instructed your mic is now live. Andrea, youre up next. Can you hear me . Okay. Hi. Thank you all for being here. This is a really tough act to follow. One of the things that people ask me is why did you decide to write a biography about four women who didnt know each other, who were in different fields, who were arguably in different generations, and how could you think about writing a group biography . And the genesis of this book really grew out of a conversation i was having with a friend, and i realized there were four great women, each of whom an interestingly similar and adjacent ways had changed the way we think about a swath of the world. Rachel carson, who wrote silent spring in 1962 completely changing the way we think about chemicals and the environment. Jane jacobs who in 1961 wrote a book called the death and life of Great American cities and also stood up against robert moses and saved the Greenwich Village from urban renewal which was a whole new idea, changing the way we think about cities and Old Buildings and old neighborhoods. Jane goodall who in 1960 discovered chimps using tools changing the way we think about animals and our kinship and how close we are to them. And alice waters who in 1965, on a semester abroad in france, fell in love with everything french, particularly french cooking and came back to berkeley, california, and five years later started the first local fresh organic serving restaurant kicking off the Sustainable Food movement. So i thought that was interesting, and then i started looking into sort of reading their work, and i realized all had been uncredentialed outsiders. Two of them goodall and jacobs hadnt even graduated from college. All had been green thinkers before any of us had incorporated the idea of green or eco into our collective vocabularies. They had waded into their fields in respected fields, gotten their hands literally and figuratively dirty and against all odds, they had spoken to the power, in carsons case the pesticide industry, in jacob the whole juggernaut of urban reyule, in goodall all the people who thought animals were mechanical machines and then prevailed even though they had been mocked and marginalized, they stood their ground. All had had brought a fresh perspective to their respected fields, and finally, all had had their breakthrough moments in the 60s. This really interested me because it was 1962 that silent spring came out. 1961 that death of life of Great American cities, 1960 that goodall was in africa and 1965 when alice waters was in france. I thought oh well the 60s must be my fifth character, but as i started reading, i realized it wasnt the 60s. It was really the 50s. The priorities and goals of the 50s that all of these women were pushing back against. One of the things as i started reading about the 50s and i agree with kai what happens when youre studying peoples lives is you begin to see that you have to understand the culture that formed them and shaped them. The 50s was a decade of conformity and cold war fierce. Cold war fears. It was a very sqits schizophrenic age, we were terrified of nuclear armageddon. There was an idea of mass production and started making houses. Mcdonalds had followed suit and was making Assembly Line food. The bomb had won the war, and so chemists and physicists were king. All of which is to say that the future seemed to belong to our technological knowhow, particularly sciencebased technology. Insects would be eradicated with pesticides. Farmland would be made more efficient with synthetic fertilizers. Food would be engineered in labs. There was a great push to essentially industrialize nature. And one of the things about these four women, because they were outsiders and because they werent trained, they didnt know what the they didnt agree with the direction of the culture, and they looked at the world very differently, and so they saw different things. So one of the things as i was writing this book, i was trying to figure out is what was it about the culture in 1962 at a time when women couldnt get credit cards without a male cosigner, when a woman couldnt be in a lot of states on jury duty, when there was still headmaster laws . What was about these women that their work carried such power and why at that moment . So i started really reading all of their work. And jane swra jane jacobs one of the things she says most of us begin with a confirmation bias, we know what we think and we go into the world and we collect information that kind of supports our ideas. And jacobs said i dont know what i think. I go into the world and i start looking for patterns, and once i begin to see patterns, then i begin to generalize and know what i think. So i tried to do as i was writing the book is to look at their lives and start to see sort of parallels. One parallel and i love to tell the story is they were all incredible communicators, very very eloquent, and they understood that people will only protect what they love, and that changing minds meant winning hearts. So their writing was very accessible and filled with personal anecdotes which is very much considered a nono. The story i like to tell is jane goodall who to this day is traveling 300 days a year. Shes on the road. Shes got a lot of handlers. One morning she was told by her handlers, you have to be in this room and you have to speak to a group of l. A. Police department the top brass. And she thought what am i going to say to these people . She walked into the room and there were about 50 men, all kind of staring down at their laps thinking why do we have to listen to this primatologist . And she said well, if i was a female chimpanzee and i were to walk into a room full of alpha males such as yourself, i would be a fool if i didnt begin with an act of submission which would be [laughter] at which point she had everyones attention. [laughter] all of these women were incredibly savvy about getting peoples attentions. Jane jacobs who was fighting urban renewal, at one point, when a neighborhood at the time the idea was cities were going down the tubes, and that the only way to save them was to knock down huge swaths of neighborhoods and put up highrise housing towers. A lot of times very anonymous, super blocks of monotonous towers, and jacobs neighborhood had been targeted. It was the west village. So she organized a group of neighbors, about 200 neighbors, and she bought sunglasses, and when a building is condemned, theres an x that is put on its door, on the sunglasses, she made taped xs, so all of these people showed up at city hall with these sunglasses with taped xs. Well, of course the press picked it up. The photograph went viral. And this was before the internet. And so suddenly this david and goliath battle was national news, no longer a local fight. So that was one of the things i discovered, the great communicators. The other thing was that am i running out of time that all of them were looking at the world in holistic way. At the time, the way the most of the world people who were studying things were specialists and they were operating by ideology, and they were counting and categorizing. These women were mapping relationships, which was a real paradigm shift, and i often say this book is really a book about a shift in consciousness. Most people think studying history in terms of great events, but i think really what moves the needle is changes in consciousness, and all of these women were catalysts for that. They started sweeping social movements. Maybe i will leave it there for now. [applause] david, you are up next. Thank you. Thank you to my amazing colleagues, kai, andrew, andrea, great to be here with them. Thank you all for coming. For 10 or 11 months, i have been doing book festival and talks all over, but ive never seen a festival audience like this so thank you. [applause] in fact its been so heartening to learn that there are a lot of americans who want to read books. [applause] theres still a lot that dont, but thats another matter. [laughter] i have come to think that Frederick Douglas in some ways chose me or, you know, drew me in as much as i have ever chosen him, because its been so long. I cant remember. I never learned anything about Frederick Doug lass in high school. That was in the 1960s, that im aware of. It was in college, i took the first ever black history course, taught at Michigan State university, and either 68 or 69, taught by a brazilianist but because he was black american, they said les, teach this, so he did. I think i encountered douglass there, but it was in graduate school early when i was trying to figure out what to work on. I wanted to work on abolitionism and the coming of the civil war. I wanted to work on black abolitionists and therefore one lands on Frederick Douglass because he left by far the most sources and material. Why one chooses to stay with douglass for so long, i mean, i wrote a lot of other books along the way, although douglass was some little piece of most of them. It is because we do get obsessed. Theres no question, but then the question, what do you get obsessed with . And in douglasss case, as many of you surely know from reading him, its the words. Douglass was a word master. He became with time. He certainly didnt you know, nobody is born a genius with words. It took him time. He was a terrible speller. He had to learn how to put all those metaphors together that kept flying in his mind. But the only real power Frederick Douglass ever had, and to the extent he changed the world and is one of these change makers, thats what were talking about today, is that he did it with language. And that is never easy to pin down. How do you pin on the wall the moment when he changed the world with language . Or the next moment, or the next moment, or did he . I remember once watching Tony Morrison do a reading, and afterward in the q and, a, people kept asking her what is it you want your books to do . And she got frustrated at one point, and she said i dont know how a book changes the world. You know, all these young people in the audience who were adoring Toni Morrison didnt want to hear that. But that was so honest. She said i want the slaves to have a memorial. I thought that was a great answer. She didnt know exactly how a book changes the world or language changes the world. Douglass of course draws us not just because his voice became such an oracle, not just because he is i think the poet of american democracy in the 19th century, but he had more to say both from an embittered ragefilled angry voice of a former slave trying to explain slavery and even later as a patriot of american creeds, a radical patriot of americas creeds, he had more to say about this deepest american dilemma, this pivot of our history, slavery, the coming of the civil war, the fighting of that armageddon, the destruction of the first republic, the creation of the second republic, the remaking of the United States and the three constitutional amendments of reconstruction and then lives long enough to see its betrayal. He had more to say about all of that. He wrote millions of words. But one of the difficulties anybody working on douglass faces, i would be curious to see how we think about this, if you work on an autobuyinger who wrote 1200 pages of autobiography, he is imposing himself on you on every page and in some ways the great autobiographies of douglass are both the source and the problem. Your subject is always there in your way. Blocking you, guiding you, telling you what he wants you to know and not telling you a great deal more. So the autobiographies were both my source and my subject, my joy, and my problem. I would also just say one other thing. Ive been drawn to his language and his words, in part because he was so deeply steeped in two great traditions, one is the natural rights tradition, the enlightened secular tradition, that of which the United States is formed and born and still despite ourselves surviving. He was a tremendous proponent of the natural rights tradition. He loves the First Principles of the declaration of independence. It was the practices that were the problem. But then hes deeply steeped as well in the other great tradition, in the 19th century america, which is the bible. This man could not really craft a speech into his old age without some use of the hebrew prophets. He learned his story telling in the cadences of the King James Bible and in the stories from exodus through isaiah, jeremiah, ezekial, amos, he was an old testamentstyle storyteller. An endless fascination if in that endless fascination in that, and i made that a central theme of the book. Douglass is one of those people who you know whatever we think of the american story he truly did go from nowhere and nothing to somewhere. He was born out in the Eastern Shore along a Horse Shoe Bend in the river, in 1818, before steamboats are on the river, before the telegraph, before the railroad, and before the rotary press, all elements of modernity that he would exploit and would transform his life. Live all the way to 1895 and electric lightbulbs and internal combustion engines and even the phonograph. Although so far as we know he was never recorded which is a shame. But in that epic trajectory that he lives, he lives this great transformation of the country from slavery to freedom, and then its near betrayal and never stopped commenting on what it all meant. So theres a certain irresistible draw of that life if you can deal with living with it for a very long time. [applause] so were dealing with many iconic figures. So lets try to get right to it and dehumanize i mean humanize them. [laughter] demythology them. What are their human flaws . Tell us about a point when you as a biographer muttered to yourself how could you this . Andrew, do you have a moment with churchill where many of them. [laughter] and again and again, it was as i mentioned earlier, he did make blunder after blunder. He got women suffrage wrong. He got the Gold Standard wrong. He got the application crisis lots of things horribly wrong but he learned from each of those. The thing he got most wrong was a campaign in 1915 where it was a brilliant idea, the idea was to try to get the royal navy from the Eastern Mediterranean through the straits and then anchor it off modern day istanbul and thereby take the ultimate empire out of the first world war. If it would have come off, it would have been one of the great strategies in the history of warfare. Through the implementation of it, it didnt come off. And we lost six ships on the first day, the 18th of march, 1915. And then he doubled down on it, on the defeat and insisted on a huge Amphibious Assault on the western side of the straits and ultimately over the next eight months, that led to the killing or wounding of 147,000 people. And he stuck with that campaign, and each time, when i was writing it, i was thinking this is the point where he had to just wash his hands of it and say no, the men must be evacuated. This is not going to work. And each time for eight months, he argued to the war counsel that it was going to. They needed one more push and it would all be all right and they would be able to capture the peninsula and win the campaign. I wanted to follow up on churchill quickly. You claim in the book that witnesses could only attest to him being truly drunk on one occasion. During the Second World War. During the Second World War. Okay. [laughter] but your descriptions of his daily consumption of alcohol are colorful. He would have drunk any of us under the table, absolutely. But he was not an alcoholic. He did drink an enormous amount. He had an iron constitution of alcohol. He was capable of a lot of drinking. One of his friends said that Winston Churchill couldnt have been an alcoholic because no alcoholic could have drunk that much. [laughter] really quickly a story of his drinking. After he retired, he used to invite people pretty much anyone who asked to come to his house in kent the manor house where he would show them his study and take them around his library, at about 6 00 he would offer them a drink in the drawing room. He did this to two american mormons. [laughter] and one of the mormons said to him strong drink is like a serpent. And churchill replied ive long been looking for a drink like that. [laughter] okay. Andrea . Humanize your figures. I can honestly say that i didnt find huge flaws. One of the ways in which i humanized Rachel Carson, i knew about silent spring. I knew about the start of the environmental movement. I had no idea that she was first of all born desperately poor. She was supporting her entire family during college, after college, five people in her family, and as she started writing silent spring, she was diagnosed with cancer. She didnt tell anyone. She was pathologically private, and she was very afraid even then that she knew the Chemical Companies were going to put up resistance, and she was friday afraid if anyone knew she had cancer they would say the only reason this woman is interested is the association between pesticides and cancer is because shes dying of cancer. The secretary of agriculture said i dont understand why she with no children should be concerned about genetics. So she was during the whole time she was writing, she was battling this, in silence. At one point she testified before congress about pesticides and she was bald from chemotherapy, so she had a wig. She could barely walk. She hobbled. She told people it was arthritis. And she literally testified for an hour and a half, and then went home and immediately had to go to the hospital. So she had this sort of super human stoicism and courage which was extraordinary through her story because she really didnt want anyone to know. And then on the theme of drinking, the one i think the other two also i didnt find so many flaws, but alice waters, because what first attracted her to good food was the beauty of it and the good taste, it was the 60s, so there was a lot of drugs and rock and roll, and there was no attention to the business side of the restaurant at all. After the first two weeks, they realized they had no money to pay any of the staff, and they said, you know, anyone that could do without pay we would really appreciate it. [laughter] there was very little discipline and there was a lot of drinking of wine, Something Like 30,000 maybe ive got this number wrong bottles of wine disappeared in the first year of the restaurant because they would part of hospitality was to serve a glass of wine to a good customer and then of course the bottle was open so why not finish it. [laughter] and so i would say that the lack of discipline in the beginning was maybe her flaw, but it was also part of the charm of that she really wanted to give people an experience of pleasure and sensuality and really remind people what good food tastes like because at that point america had forgotten how to eat. Douglass had all kinds of flaws. As i say in the book, he was beautifully human. You need to remember, he was forged in the crucible of slavery. He found it very difficult to trust people, anybody. Later in life, it got a bit easier. He did not make friendships very well, especially with men, especially with black men. He was hyper sensitive. Now that may not seem like a terrible human flaw, but when you rise to the top, and you are on the pedestal, and now you have all especially by the time of the war and the postwar years, many of the next generation of black leaders, all of whom are about 20 years younger, have college educations, were not born in slavery, and heres this former slave, this fugitive slave, whom everybody says is the greatest, you know, black person in america, the greatest this and that. The greater orator. And the next generation of black leaders just want to knock him off the pedestal. Thats what we do; right, to our elders. Douglass got into terrible fights with his rivals, personal fights, in the press, here in washington, d. C. He and John Mercer Langston went at it in brutal ways at times, attacking each others families, attacking flaws of their family members. On womens rights, douglass was in every way possible for a 19th century american man, a womans rights man. The only male speaker at a convention in 1848, one of the male signers, the declaration of sentiment, always a womens suffrage man, even Women Economic rights but when he got into the fight with Susan Anthony and Katie Stanton over the 15th amendment, 1869, 1870, he took a lot of brutal criticism from anthony and stanton and some others. He handled most of it with grace, but not always. And some of it was deeply personal. They used the n word on him. On the other hand, he was capable of saying things like yes, but women have their husbands to vote their interests for them. Right when you think, you know, come on, fred, youre so modern, youre not so modern. [laughter] there are all kinds of elements of his extended family life that show how deeply human this man was. Two marriages, one to anna murray of 44 years, a very difficult marriage, but a marriage and a relationship and a woman i try to develop in this book as much as anyone ever has despite the fact she remained illiterate all of her life. That was a very difficult relationship, and he did not always handle that well. There were relationships with two european women, from england and germany. Teaser, i will leave it there. Q a, and you can pend 20 weekends reading and you can spend 20 weekends reading the book. [laughter] i would also say at the end of the day, he sometimes struggled to be a good father. He loved his children. But they were in some ways always walking contradictions of so much of what he stood for, and it became a deeply human, deeply troubled set of relationships with his three surviving adult sons and his one surviving adult daughter, and the difficulties they had making livings, making a life. He was always out preaching selfreliance on the platform to africanamericans, and then back home the next day, writing checks to his kids. I have the account books that show this. So the sensitivities over that sometimes his letters to them are full of love and caring and sometimes full of a parents disappointments and chastisements and god you can see his humanity in that. And sometimes he simply was just the absent father. This man probably traveled more miles than any other american of the 19th century, the only competitor is probably mark twain, but twain cheated. He went to asia. [laughter] so he was not home through a lot of the childhood of his kids. They adored him, but it was a very difficult thing being his sons and his daughter. So part of the difficulty, the challenge of being a biographer is to deal and write about what you dont know, what you cant pin down. So david, talk a bit about the mystery of who fredericks father was. Yes, you put your finger on it. The hardest thing for me throughout this is knowing what you know and then what you cannot find, those illusive elements, and im dealing with a 19th century person here, and an autobiographer who said almost nothing about his family life or his two marriages in his 1200 pages of autobiography. You had to get that other ways. you can never figure it out. And he tried very hard including going to a near death bed. In the late 1870s and simply asked him, are you my father. And he didnt get a yes which is one of the reasons i dont say it was resolved well. We have not proved that yet. Off of there is an effort to do dna testing. I am just glad we didnt do it before my book was out because if he didnt know i didnt want to know. [laughter] i wanted to keep this in a historical times. [laughter] and his mother, he really didnt know he had some image of her bloody had he was an orphan. The hardest part for me, and then ill pass the question on to my colleagues. It somehow getting to him. His wife of 44 years, who followed him out of slavery in baltimore, off of she was born free. This has brought a shred of paper that he ever wrote, you have to get it through the reminiscences of the children and throat letters and other people wrote about her and threw her presence in his life. And that is many times i love this question i wonder for my colleagues, i wonder if they have thought about this one. Every biographer, you are dealing with leaving people. Thats another matter but this subject is dead, you always want to bring the subject in, i did have douglas in the seminar room. So like four hours. [laughter] no bathroom break. [laughter] and the doors are locked. And i get to heaven. Again asking, get a list of 25 questions that will give me just through the first two hours. Of course he wont answered any of them. But number one is mr. Douglas, anna, discussed. [laughter] and then it goes on from there. Mr. Douglas, where did you really say of Abraham Lincoln. Not all of those eulogies that you wrote. He wrote three to four kinds. Mr. Douglas, talk about hatred. Talk about your hatred of slavery. It is all over your work. Talk about it. Mr. Douglas. Talk about the breakup with garrison. It was huge for you was in it. Is going to deflect all of these of course every time i imagine him in cimarron, he just goes away. [laughter] but it is a long list and we all have them. All the things he didnt tell us about it i want to ask about those. Andrea, what is your mystery problem. One mystery problem is that Rachel Carson never seem to have a partner and it never married. And at the very end of her life, she seemed to be very much in love with another woman was married. And they had in the wrote very expressive and motive letters to each other and she destroyed, the edible sort of secret system where goleta was is it too explicit, they were going to dysphoric goleta and they had a little code word for that. They call them apples. So half of goleta, i know a lot about this relationship to the letters from her friend dorothy, but i have read very few letters that rachel wrote to dorothy because she destroyed them. So i say she was probably a lesbian. But she couldnt on that and she was very proper and very as i said shy and reticent and it wouldve been, she would been mortified that im here in this stage in front of you all talking about this. So i dont know whether it was a platonic love or carnal, it was generally this great love of her life and she seemed to have a serial series of women that she was always close to how she lived with her mother her whole life and her mother took care of, shopping the cooking. So that i love to be able to ask her even though she would never tell us. I also, jane goodall had many in fact when i first wrote her section, i 15 pages on her many things and she was very beautiful and pursued by ulcers of men and had all these codenames for them. I want to give it to my husband, he said this is the little off balance. If weve god, 20 pages on her romantic life. So i cut that down. She did marry two times. Both of those marriages broke up and i say it was because she was such a largerthanlife character and she had such a Huge International profile and it is a liberty if he was very any man to live in a shadow of jane goodall and of a woman. So those are things maybe i had her alone in a room, i would ask her, i dont even know whether i wouldve written that because that really wasnt the point of my biography. Is very much trying to look at the genesis of the characters in the genesis of their ideas. Each one is the certain amount of personal life but it didnt get into that loophole and i didnt drove down into the personal lives but i wouldve wondered about that. News windows or anything about your almost thousand page book on churchill [laughter] you couldnt figure out. It still remains a mystery about winston. I very much agree that we would be wonderful to be able to interview ones that subject. I came very close to it. Last may. [laughter] give a speech about talk in miami and a lady came up to me, she said that she was the reincarnation of my sin. [laughter] and she was always double checking, it i always double check to see if she was armed. I also had questions that ive been meaning to ask. [laughter] but unfortunately, im not sure shes telling the truth. [laughter] and the one or two questions that i got first is about this where did it come from. And what would be, am i right in the make about its to do with his relationship with his father and his mother and his upbringing and teaching and stuff. And the other quick question i always wanted to ask is which i thought would be impossible to be answered. Lower his views about the glacial speed with which the Roosevelt Administration, he wasnt able to tell argument on the press and he wasnt able to even tell as his own draws about what he generally thought how slow it was to the gate great democracy in the world. With you i saw as a great struggle between good needle. And then just before i was met sit down and write my book, the majesty the queen allowed me to use her fathers diaries and in those diaries churchill met the king every tuesday a Second World War and they serve themselves with the sideboard because it couldnt have anyone else present because the king for all the great secrets of the and so on. And he wrote everything down and again and again Winston Churchill, using the king, as they always do, they use them as their shrinks. [laughter] telling them things they cant tell anyone else. Again and again, churchill expressed his extreme frustration with the Roosevelt Administration for being so slow into the Second World War. Things i always wanted to ask him at last, just before the end of this book, i was able to ask him. I want to keep on churchill for a moment. Andrew, one of your reviewer news robert norcross, writing in the guardian, had this to see somewhat begrudgingly i say. Yet that sounds right. Yet that sounds right. One surprising and unexpected insight from this exhilarating life, is that all of the qualities that we trust, is an tolerance and is lying and vulgarity, chauvinism and narcissism and prejudice, are fleetingly evident within churchill. The tempered and civilized by intelligence with grandma passed and generosity of spirit. So my question is is this comparison unfair or apt . Statement i say one thing that he misses out in the greatness, is that Winston Churchill wouldve been extremely good at tweeting. [laughter] he would he would. And the best gags consistent about carrots and viewers. This modern presence in the house of commons when they shouted rocks at him. I say the honorable member for telling us was on his mind. [laughter] so. Is there anything in the Internet Private lives of your subject that use wiring a biographer would consider out of balance. You decided not to go into that marriages is it too much. David and on your account of frederick, you danced around the issue and i say sort of tell your reader that you concluded that there was, relationship with crossing. Soon i guess. But it is hard to know. It is impossible to know. So that we deal with these difficult intimate things in the shadow. Number we do try to stay behind your evidence as best you can and then to visit. I would see no, there is nothing. Nothing that i wouldve stepped around or did step around. I said exactly what i saw in the end but is the relationship with Jean Griffith nicholas foreman, who became the dearest of friends and the crucial friend in his life is coeditor in his fundraiser and his confidant, she also read robert burns problems with him late at night and even told us a couple of titles of the poems. And then at 22 year relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, 99 and a off percent of everything we know about that only after. Nothing he wrote to her, survived. And he wrote to her often. I do believe that there was a sexual relationship. I cant prove it. But are reasons i believe that. Off of i dont say the intimacy was the most important say about it. She provided him in an intellectual connection and an outlet that he otherwise did not have in his life. It is the intimacies with his children, and some ways are so revealing about the nature of his life and their life and the nature of this phenomenal family, they became what i call in the book, the black first family. The way they were treated here in washington. After he moved in 19 sunday two to washington, the press and there were lots of newspapers three or four black papers in the five and six white papers. Everything in his family did, good bad and ugly and otherwise, was in the press. I reveal everything i find about that. And for a lot. So there is nothing i wouldve stepped around if id found it. Maybe thats because its in the 19th century. But i had no fear, with douglas i never had any fear that as going to have sent her going off the wall, there is is it too much, greatness. Is it too much gravitas in this life and the more i found about his flaws and the complications of his humidity, the more interesting he became. So are running out of time, and i know we want to get to q a. That brings me to a larger question about biography in general. Which is in the academy, and the university, biography has a certain reputation. And if learned that very rarely are professors this day encouraging their phd students to tackle a biography. Is of the second third or fourth book. Our tenure. But we are not allowed to take biographical subject as your thesis. And biography is sort of considered among some historians and on no, maybe among the general public as second tier, it doesnt have the gravitas of a real history and its bad history because it is focusing much on the individual. And yet, some of our greatest biographers and historians like robert carol have written these wonderful long large books like viewers. And it they teach us so much. So many respond to the academy. In defense of biography. Make delighted they are sneering. [laughter] about biography because it means that good writers can write biographies instead. [laughter] who boop [laughter] [applause] i was very interested in writing this biography, as much like a novel as possible to make people really care about these characters so i didnt care about it being an encyclopedic and in some ways, mine wasnt a traditional biography. I was really interested in making them come alive in the page. So the people knew them as more than taglines. And i say that there are is it too many biographies the drone on about everything a day as a character news life that is not really, an encyclopedic biography of carson that was hate hundred pages. Its really impressive in terms of its research but there is a lot about the chemistry and only especially, was care about that and bog you down. So i was really trying to kind of cut all of that out. I dunno, i say that there are all kinds of ways to write biographies. Sue asked david you are the only person here from the academy [laughter]. I respond. Two responses, some academic historians are very good writers. [laughter] and some of them are my best friends. [laughter] there is a reason of course biography is of course not considered for graduate students to do because of the social history of revolution. The past 50 years, social history and the study of forces in history and groups of people of ordinary people, of class and race and gender etc. Etc. Etc. Academics love our seams and or trims and our new methods and new languages, i frankly hate all of the new trendy languages. Good writing is good writing. And it doesnt have to have the right buzzwords in it. Everything is it a space. [laughter] street is the street. Just because you caught the boulder, doesnt mean your transnational historian area [laughter] off of there is transnational history. Look, my book is hate hundred pages to but it is a story. Theres even some apartment in it i say. Off of not very conscious. We are storytellers at the didnt end of the day but you also write right social history still tell a great story. Some of the greatest historians have seen the world with her social history but also written biographies of great admin market, couldnt resist writing a biography of ben franklin. And tom watson and i could go on and on. In many of our greatest historians work in all kinds of fields but they have all done at least one biography. On that note lets open it up to the audience and have a few questions. How are we going to do this. Our microphones, are in the i o. Please. I have a question for professor. I live a couple of blocks east on the park on capitol hill. Its sort of like the original memorial lincoln memorial, so sent you there. Is so small. Everything is smaller than the lincoln memorial. Is Frederick Douglass dedicated it in the 1870s, and there are lots of important people there and its interesting speech about lincoln and it was previewed on, you mentioned like what you actually say of lincoln and is the little revealing. It wasnt all flattering. You are talking to a white audience and you are Abraham Lincoln news children and we are the step children. After lincoln, died, it is like this public views on him they change. Be my guest. Enter if you read my book yet but the first 11 pages narrate the story of the speech. I start the book with the parade. Of the availing of that sent you. So now you up read chapter one. Not back that is the second greatest speech. The first is the fourth of july speech, a speech dedicating the fragrant memorial as its called up to the linkin park is the work of genius. In the first half of it, ill be quick. In the first half of it, he lays out this idea that my wife fellow american pretty racialized is this all story. Which wasnt his habit. My fellow fellow americans, you are my stepchildren. He refrained this to miss all the time then theres a break in the middle. He is then uses a second refrain where he says, but on his rule, in due time, lincoln news caution and his pace, is how we became free. On his rule and in due time. The second of the speech is attribute to fragmented president. He does both of those, in the same 20 minute speech. Its an absolutely brilliant piece. And he didnt have just a white audience hut was a huge black prayed that day but no africanamericans ever had that audience again until barack obama. Because in the president , the supreme court, the cabinet, members of congress, in front of him. That was president. In annville the statute and i looked in vain for some little remark to the speech. I mustve gone back to the office and i can enact because he never wrote about word about it. It was so disappointing about it. It wouldve what thought about it. Yes sir. You talked about these trends. Looking at one now with this trend is this big data. An hate yard talking about people in an area of science and access to that kind of information. But that letters to their stories. So my question is are we Still Producing those kinds of storytellers today. [laughter] not enough. But book festivals are about storytellers. You read because of the story. You can refer the information. You can read your trade journal for that. But i do say one remembers ideas if they are attached to story and personalize it and it humanizes it and puts a human face on a lot of times right abstract ideas so i say you are right. I say we need more storytellers and is an argument for biography really. Im a chairman of the institute of enterprise and we had hundred really good history books for forward comprehensive and i say actually statement this with Television Series are. We are all addicted to something because they are a story. Soon i say you prayed. With emails and text and facebook. I fear that the art of writing letters, is fading away. And i wonder, what you would all see will be all of my subjects brought a lot of letters which i used and they also wrote journals and some that went out Daily Journal so there was this huge paper trail that i used to and even if there werent the systems kept changing. You cant have any way to save them. I say biography particularly will suffer. I say one thing is tremendously important is whether or not people are keeping a diary. If they are, then there is a hope. Certainly churchill was surrounded by people who were ordered not to keep a diary. [laughter] and say they did. Because of the otherwise it would look a lot more difficult for us. In our jobs. Emails involved now, and you telling the jimmy carter. Are you dealing only with the presidencies. Im dealing with the whole life of jimmy carter. I emailed dana not exist. And his edge. Its amazing how papers disappear as well. And you look at it and thats really true. But email, i am encouraging, i tell everyone that you should print out all of your emails. [laughter] i dont have time to read them. Is still bring them to an archive. Its a huge task. I do know, the president ial, im doing biography now. Is very different than any of my biographies because there is much material. Her drowning. Ronald Reagan Library has hate million pages of classified material is 2 million pages. Still 2 million pages you still cant possibly as a biographer be above overall. So the question is it too much serious problem if you are dealing with biographies of the unknown. Which are actually becoming quite popular in the biographies of the common man. You need this kind of materials and letters and diaries. It is going to be a big problem. Two minutes. I say it all could be answered that when your book was published 200 anniversary of his birth, the hundred 25th anniversary of his death. If douglas was alive today and he mentioned he lived long enough, the things that he championed. What what he most focus on changing in America Today if he was alive. Racism. Racism. He would, i have been asked i have learned this year, the you cant see that anymore because Everyone Wants to know how do we tell our children what we are leaving through. He would be a fall at the nature of the White Supremacy and racism today. [applause] and he would be telling us the long view. I say he would also, you have to forgive me for anything these present wrecked some piece of the original party. Just for starters. One last question. Only say all of the panels today and the underwriters. Thank you so much. So this question is directed to mr. Roberts and ms. Barnett talked about how she wanted to write 60s within amazing biographies. For incredible women and as you note mr. Roberts, mr. Churchill passed away in the 60s he oversaw different change. They are changing england environments changing conservative party you see, with Winston Churchill news death at the ripe edge of 96. In a very long time. Do you see the new reboot the new rebirth of intellectual and so much change in dynamic personality. This was in the 60s. His extraordinary in the 90s considering how many times he died in his life. And the fact that hes made 160,000 cigars. [laughter] very much to see its at the end of the era. Will then wrap it up here. Thank you so much. The victory biography